Faerie Wars 01 - Faerie Wars (3 page)

'Cup of tea,' said Henry, smiling weakly, just to shut him up. He wished he'd never asked about Anais. His father's sudden change was positively scary. Henry didn't want to know about Anais. He'd only asked so Dad could say, 'Anais? Of course not -- don't be silly.' Which was what Dad
did
say, more or less. Except Henry didn't want to hear his mum was having an affair either. His mum having an affair was just as bad, maybe worse. And who was she having it
with}
Henry had never seen his mother look twice at any man except his dad. Maybe Dad was just plain wrong. Maybe it would all turn out to be a misunderstanding.

The swing door swung open and a young waitress hurried out carrying two plates of eggs. 'Hi, Tim,' she said as she walked past.

'Morning, Ellen,' Tim said shortly.

Henry blinked. Looked like his dad came here quite often. For some reason that felt just a little spooky. There seemed to be too much about his parents that Henry didn't know.

The waitress Ellen came back, tugging a notepad out of her apron. She was a pretty brunette, maybe eight years older than Henry, wearing a tight black skirt, a white blouse and sensible shoes. The shoes reminded him of Charlie, who kept saying she preferred comfort to looks and always would, even when she grew up.

'Usual, Tim?' she asked cheerfully. When he nodded she glanced at Henry and grinned. 'Who's the hunk?'

Henry blushed. Tim said, 'My son Henry. Henry, this is Ellen.'

'Hi, Henry, you want a heart attack as well?'

'Just tea,' Henry murmured. He was aware he was blushing and that made him blush more.

'Got some nice scones,' Ellen said. 'Fancy one?'

'Yes, OK,' Henry said to get rid of her.

It didn't work. 'Plain or raisin?'

'Plain,' Henry said impatiently.

'Butter or clotted cream?'

'Butter.'

'Strawberry jam or marmalade?'

'Strawberry.'

'Gotcha,' Ellen said. She closed her notebook and went off at last.

'Nice kid,' Tim remarked.

'You come to this place often, Dad?'

Tim shrugged. 'You know ...' he said vaguely.

Henry looked out through the window. 'You want to tell me about Mum, Dad?'

The bacon, eggs and sausages must have been waiting in a bain-marie because Ellen carried them right back through the swing door. She had a teapot in her other hand. She set the plate in front of Tim. 'Your scone's coming,' she told Henry.

They waited in silence as she bustled away and returned immediately with a scone that shared its plate with a pat of butter and a tiny plastic tub of strawberry jam. Henry stared at his father's breakfast, thanking heaven he hadn't ordered the same. The bacon was fat and the eggs were hard. With absolute revulsion he noticed there was a kidney lurking behind the fried tomato. This was his father's
usual?

Ellen gave him his scone and laid out cups and saucers. 'Milk's on the table,' she told them as she left.

Tim glanced at his plate, then at Henry. 'You sure you don't want some of this?'

Henry shuddered and reached for a knife to cut his scone. The sooner it was started, the sooner it would be over. 'I want you to talk to me, Dad.'

'Yes,' his father said, 'I expect you do.'

Tim Atherton so didn't want to tell his son anything. But he talked. He poked at his breakfast and talked and once he started, he couldn't seem to stop.

'You know your mum and I have been having ... problems ... don't you, Henry?' Henry didn't. At least not before this morning. He opened his mouth to say so as his father said, 'Of course you do, you're not stupid. And you're not a child any more. You must have seen the signs -- God knows they're obvious enough.'

They hadn't been obvious to Henry. To his profound embarrassment, a tear oozed out of his father's eye and rolled down his right cheek. The worst of it was Dad didn't even notice. Since he couldn't think of anything else to say, Henry waited. Eventually his father said, 'I don't know if you're too young for this, but our ... relationship started to go downhill a couple of months ago. Well, maybe a little more than a couple of months. She ... she just seemed to change. It got sort of obvious her heart wasn't in the marriage any more. You ... you can tell. It's not hard. That's when I started to get irritable with you and Aisling. I'm sorry about that, but I couldn't help it.'

Well, you asked for this, Henry thought. He hadn't noticed his dad getting irritable with him and Aisling, at least not any more than usual and only when they deserved it mostly. He kept his eyes on his plate.

'So,' his father said. 'You see.'

That was it? So.
You see.
Henry said quietly, 'You have to tell me about Mum's affair, Dad.'

His father sighed. He looked wrecked, but curiously relieved. 'Hard to believe, isn't it? I still can't get my head round it.' He straightened up in his chair and pushed the plate away. Henry noticed he hadn't eaten one of the congealing eggs, or the hideous kidney.

Henry took a deep breath. 'Who's the man?' he asked.

His father looked at him blankly. 'What man?'

'The man Mum's having an affair with.'

The intensity of his father's stare was almost frightening. 'I told you, Henry. Didn't you hear me? It's not a man. Your mum's having an affair with my secretary Anais.'

The words lay there, stretched out across the air like a shroud.

His father offered to drop him off, but Henry said he'd walk. He took to the back streets and they were all so empty it was spooky. He walked and thought. He felt he was moving on an island a yard or two across and the world ended right outside it. On this island (that moved right along with him as he walked) he kept replaying the conversation with his dad.

Henry said, 'You're telling me Mum is having an affair with
another woman?

The distress on his father's face was pitiful. 'Yes. I know it ... it ... it's ...'

Henry said, 'But you and Mum -- I mean, she's had
children.
Aisling and me. If she's ... you know ... that would make her a
lesbian.
Dad, that doesn't make any
sense!'

His father shifted uncomfortably. He was obviously finding all this even more painful than Henry. 'It's not as simple as that, Henry. A lesbian isn't something you're born as. At least it can be, but not always. And it's not all or nothing either. People can go for years not realising they're attracted to their own sex.'

It didn't sound likely to Henry. 'Yes, but Mum's had
children,'
he said again.

His father managed a wan smile. 'Having children isn't all that difficult,' he said. The smile disappeared. 'I'm afraid there's no doubt. Martha and Anais ... Martha and Anais ...' He looked as if he might be about to cry again.

Henry pushed it. 'How can you be
sure?'

His father told him.

In business you could set your watch by good old Tim Atherton. If he said he would be in at nine, he was in at nine. If he said he was going out for half an hour, you could be certain he'd be back in thirty minutes, not a minute more, not a minute less. Yesterday he'd said he would be back at five, but his appointment got cancelled due to some emergency. There was no reason for him to stay away from the office and he got back a few minutes before three.

The office itself was in one of those tall buildings developers put up all over Britain in the 1980s. Tim's company had all of the third floor. The doorman snapped a salute, a ground-floor receptionist gave him a nice smile. If you were a casual visitor, you had to be issued with a name tag that acted as a security pass, but Tim headed straight for the lifts.

It took a while for one to come down, but when it did, he had it to himself. The ride to the third floor took perhaps fifty seconds. He stepped out into the Newton-Sorsen company reception and said hello to Muriel who told him his wife had just called and was waiting for him in his office. He wasn't expecting Martha, but sometimes she popped in when she was shopping. Anais would tell her he was out until five of course -- he hadn't bothered to phone in to say the meeting had been cancelled -- but maybe he'd catch her before she left again.

He walked down the carpeted corridor to his office. Jim Handley came out of a door and collared him about the new presentation. By the time he'd finished with Jim and walked the rest of the way, it was seven minutes after three.

To reach his own office, he had to walk through the smaller office of Anais Ward, who guarded him the way most secretaries did their bosses. He was a little surprised to find Anais wasn't at her desk, but only a little -- there was a coffee machine down the corridor or she might have slipped off to the loo. He was more surprised that Martha wasn't there either. He'd have thought he would have bumped into her if she'd left in the lift. But maybe she'd gone down the back stairs: she did that sometimes for the exercise.

He locked his office when he wasn't in it -- some important documents in there -- so he pulled his keys from his pocket as he walked across Anais room. He had the key in the lock and the door open in maybe a second, two at the most. His wife and his secretary were both inside. They were startled, breaking apart at the sound of the door. They'd been kissing.

'Maybe it was just ... you know, a friendly thing,' Henry suggested, sick to his stomach. 'Women kiss each other all the time.'

'It wasn't just a friendly thing,' his father told him firmly.

After a while, Henry said, 'You only found out
yesterday?'

They were bound to divorce. He couldn't see any way out of it after what his father had told him. The funny thing was Dad never said a word about divorce. Or leaving. Or separating or anything like that. But that could change tonight after he had his talk with Mum. Obviously he couldn't just ignore what had happened. Unless, of course, he was hoping Mum would get over it. Did you get over being a lesbian? Henry was so far out of his depth he felt he was drowning.

For once Mr Fogarty opened the door so fast you'd have thought he was standing behind it. 'You're late,' he said. 'And you look like shit.'

'Sorry,' Henry mumbled. 'I had to do something for my dad.'

'You want to talk or you want to get started?' Mr Fogarty had a wiry, old man's frame, no hair at all and on wet days his right hip hurt like hell. But his face looked as if it was cut from granite and his eyes were so sharp they were almost scary.

Henry'd had enough talk for one morning. 'I'd like to get started,' he said. 'Seeing as I'm late.'

'Suits me,' Fogarty said. 'I can't get into the garden shed any more. Bin the crap and tidy up the rest. But don't touch the mower.'

Mr Fogarty's garden was a stretch of dusty-looking lawn with a tired buddleia bush and little else, all surrounded by a high stone wall. The shed was a ramshackle wooden affair that had seen better days. The old boy had pushed three empty wheelie bins outside. It looked as if he was expecting Henry to throw out a lot of rubbish.

Henry straightened his back. It was going to be heavy, dirty work, but he wasn't sorry. Heavy dirty work would take his mind off things for a while. As he pressed the latch of the shed door, a small brown butterfly detached itself from the buddleia bush and fluttered briefly on to the ledge of the tiny window before dropping to the ground. Mr Fogarty's fat tomcat Hodge appeared out of nowhere to grab it.

'Oh, come on, Hodge!' Henry exclaimed. 'Don't eat butterflies!' He liked cats, even Hodge, but hated it when they killed birds and pretty insects. The trouble was, once they got hold of something like a butterfly, you couldn't take it from them without killing it yourself. 'Drop it, Hodge!' he shouted firmly, but without much hope.